


wreckage

by Merricat_Blackwood



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (hinted at), (sort of), Anger, Angst, Dark Rey, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Isolation, Jakku, Loneliness, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Sad, great now this tag list reads like a trump tweet, hunger, let me know if there's something i should add!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 14:13:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11511078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merricat_Blackwood/pseuds/Merricat_Blackwood
Summary: soon, she would feel like her old self again.





	wreckage

**wreckage**

 

Everything was … not just as she had left it.

Jakku itself was still Jakku: all sharp edges, rusted metal, sand that whipped up like bits of shrapnel when the wind was high and hot. But the scavenger had been in a real war now, with real firepower. The sand was nothing to her.

What did cut her deeply was the gutted hull of the AT-AT walker that had been her home. All the parts of value – and a lot of the worthless bits as well – had been ripped away, leaving only a carcass as a shelter, like the bones of a once-mighty animal left to rot.

In the cavity of the walker, nothing but debris remained: drifts of sand and garbage making for uneven footing as she picked her slow way through. It looked as though many different raiders had come by over the past couple standard years, and one or more of them had had a grudge. All that had not been scavenged had been destroyed with thorough malice, a young girl's life reduced to rubble. This had been done to hurt her, or maybe even to erase her. Rey had made no friends the day she left Jakku with a fugitive and a droid and a stolen freighter, but she had not expected her enemies to retaliate in quite this way. But worse things had been done to her, and she had done worse things with her own two hands. And she was still here.

Her gaze dropped and lingered on a hint of softness in the shards and sand … a hint of softness that used to share her bed and soak up her tears in its cloth body. The doll was not a doll anymore. Too much had happened to it. It had been torn apart, small limps scattered and stained, fabric innards exposed to the elements, mummified in the dry heat. From the rent face, one remaining eye stared up into Rey's, black and blank, unblinking and betrayed. It is a staring contest that Rey loses, and she turns away to feel a sharp crunch beneath her booted foot. These plasteel chunks had been a flight helmet, and before it had been hers it had belonged to someone else, to some other woman who fought on the winning side of a war, but had lost everything in the process.

All that remained to Rey now was time, and the marking of it. The only part of her past that was left intact was the monument of the days she had spent alone: the far wall scarred with endless tally marks, too bulky to take, too damaged to be worth the effort.

Rey took her pack from her shoulders and dropped it to the ground, not caring where it landed. She tossed her staff down too, her movements jerky with exhaustion and with anger. Suddenly everything was too heavy for her, though she had carried heavier burdens before. Something about this was too much. She needed something else. Something light.

Rey's eyes never left the wall and its marks as her hand moved to her belt, removing the weapon that hung there, wrapping her fingers around the hilt so tight her fingers ached. After the war, she had vowed to never again draw her lightsaber. But there was no one here now to watch her become a liar, and it was time to begin a new battle against her oldest enemy: loneliness.

The saber sprang to life in her hand, filling the air with its hum and glow. Rey swallowed hard, bit back her emotions, tried to ignore how _right_ it felt to wield this weapon again. The only thing she could not choke down was the anger, which surged up like bile in her throat, like poison in her veins. She had tried and tried, but she could not forget it, could not set it aside, could not meditate it away. Now, she would burn it out.

The wall was seared and sparking, a mass of jagged burns, when she was done with it. The saber fizzled, the light fading and done, and Rey hit her knees in the scraps and the sand, sticky with sweat and shaking with effort. For a moment, just one brief mad moment, all she wanted was to lie down there in the corpse of her childhood and never get up again.

Then it was over and her head was clearer and before she had really decided to, she was standing. Picking up her pack. Rifling through the contents and bringing out her dinner: a single square of stale bread, a handful of dried vegetables, one protein tablet. Then the metal canteen of warm water; no more than two sips will do to wash it down.

Cross-legged in the sand outside the AT-AT, Rey watched the red horizon and took miniscule bites, making the meal last as long as she could, doing mental calculations, making plans that would help her stay one step ahead of starvation and exposure. On the provisions she had, she could probably last another week, maybe two days more … but it would not come to that. On Jakku, there was always junk for the taking, and someone willing to take that junk in turn.

Her meal was over by the time her thought had run its course, and she took a swig of water, and another, and she was about to take another when she felt the slosh inside the canteen, and stopped herself, closed it up, put it away. How soft and spoiled she had become in the war, able to access and drink water whenever she needed it or even just wanted it. And most of the time it had been _cold_ , and clean, almost sweet ... Rey's teeth ached at the memory and she gritted them tight. Already her lips were beginning to dry and crack, and she knew that licking them would make it worse but she did it anyway, just in case she had missed a few crumbs or drops. She hadn't. And her mouth was still dry, and she was still hungry.

But it wasn't so bad. Over Kelvin Ridge, the sun was going down, rust and copper spilling across the sky. When the sun was gone it would be cooler, and she would forget that she was thirsty, for a while.

Rey pulled her poncho tighter around her shoulders, hunching in on herself, pulling in her elbows and her knees. She had lived fourteen years without any arms around her; she would forget, in time, what it was like to be held. She would survive without such luxury, as she always had before. Her stomach panged, crying out for nourishment, and when she ignored it it growled a threat, promising future pain. But the threat was as hollow as her belly. She had starved before, and she was not afraid of starving again.

Finally, the sun slipped from view behind the ridge, and Rey's eyelids lowered with it: not to sleep, that was a death sentence out in the open like this, but just to rest. Already, she was so, so tired. So hungry. So _lonely_. And she missed her doll …

 _Shh,_ came a thought into her mind, and whether the thought was her own or some whisper of the living Force, Rey no longer knew or cared. _It's over, little one. Forget the past, the pain. You have enough for now._

And she wasn't sure about the rest of it, but one thing was true. It was over. The war. Her part in it. And countless lives. But not hers. Rey's life would go on, just as it always had, possibly for decades more, until she was just another set of bleached, picked bones in the sands of Jakku. For no reason, Rey's mouth twisted into a smile, and her lower lip cracked, oozing a thin trickle of blood, salt and iron on her arid tongue. The slight pain was nothing more than a blur, just as all the days would soon begin to bleed and blur together in a haze of misery.

Soon, she would feel like her old self again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> (i'm sorry)


End file.
